JVC DLA-RS10 Projector Review

February 3, 2009 - Art Feierman

Below is a heavily overexposed scene from Lord of the Rings. The overexposure lets you see all the details in the shed on the right, the structure on the left, and the plants and ground along the lower right. The DLA-RS10U performs very nicely.

Our last comparison uses the night train scene from Casino Royale. Look to the trees and shrubs on the right, especially just above the tracks. The first image is the JVC DLA-RS10, the second the RS20, third is the Epson 6500UB, followed by the Mitsubishi HC7000, and finally, the Panasonic PT-AE3000. While shadow detail performance is very good on all of these, you can see that the JVC does produce the best blacks.

Another good image for observing shadow detail is this very dark scene from the first National Treasure film. The DLA-RS10 performs extremely well on this image. This image is dramatically overexposed to allow you to view the darkest shadow details. Look to any dark area in the frame, but especially in the upper right steps. It handles those particularly well:

Overall Color & Picture Quality

The RS20 out of the box, as noted, leaves much to be desired in color accuracy and saturation, except in THX mode. THX is very impressive, but to my taste, it’s a little lacking in wow factor – a little flat. Don’t get me wrong, the RS20 really does look excellent in THX, it’s just that it can do better. THX mode also doesn’t quite have as dark a black level performance, as we achieved after calibrating. The thing is, to best calibrate the DLA-RS10 requires the color management system, and is tricky. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, if you are spending “the big bucks” for an RS20, plan to spend the additional few hundreds for a really good calibration, if you want to get the best out of this projector.

After much work here, and help with the CMS from some of the very serious enthusiasts on the forums, we obtained an excellent calibration. (For more about it, see the calibration page.) While the colors are not as dead on as my favorite (for color accuracy), the InFocus IN83, which seems to look about perfect, in terms of colors and skin tones, no matter what you throw at it, the JVC RS10, is close behind. I’ve got some side by side images, and you can see differences, in some of them, but others look so close you might mistake them for being the same projector.